Donald Shomette addresses the crowd at Sotterley Plantation on Nov. 2.
Shomette drew upon research used to write his book, “Anaconda’s Tail: The Civil War on the Potomac Frontier, 1861-65.”
Shomette, who was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Upper Marlboro and moved to Calvert County later in life, gave multiple details about the war in a presentation that lasted well over an hour. He included details in addition to more commonly known items such as John Wilkes Booth’s escape through Southern Maryland and the infamous prisoner of war prison camp at Point Lookout.
Shomette included Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties with Calvert, Charles and St. Mary’s in his definition of Southern Maryland. He noted there were 6,491 enslaved people in the area who were owned by 358 people.
“It’s one of the most intensive slave states in the Union,” he said.
Referring to President Abraham Lincoln’s controversial suspension of habeas corpus during the war, Shomette noted that Calvert County native and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney criticized Lincoln’s writ in a ruling. Habeas corpus prevents the federal government from holding someone without showing cause.
Lincoln didn’t respond directly to Taney, but Taney’s ruling resulted in a softening of the federal policy, even though military officials continued to arrest suspected Confederate sympathizers, according to history.com.
Some 20,000 to 22,000 Marylanders traveled through Southern Maryland to join the Confederate Army during the war, Shomette said.
He noted that the Union forces came up with an idea, the Anaconda Plan, to strangle the Confederacy with a naval blockade. This was laughed at in the media, Shomette said, because the Confederates captured the Norfolk Navy yard early in the war.
The Potomac River became the de facto dividing line between the North and the South, he said, with Southern Maryland in question.
St. Mary’s County sent funds to the Confederacy and Southern Marylanders organized home guard units to protect against any uprising by enslaved people and to supply troops to the South, he said.
A steamboat in Port Tobacco in Charles County allegedly had a Confederate flag with 12½ stars, Shomette said, with the half star representing Maryland. It was never found, however.
Union forces learned of a Confederate plan to invade the North from Calvert County, he said. When Union troops arrived, the Confederate troops had left but the flag flying over the courthouse in Prince Frederick was Confederate.
Confederate weapons were later found buried in fresh graves, he said.
Confederate guerrillas from Virginia made raids into Cobb Island and Piney Point during the war after Union troops were stationed in the area, he said.
It was “unsafe to be on the Potomac River on either side” during the war, according to Shomette, noting that some Union ships were sunk by Confederate mines.
A hot air balloon was used near Mattawoman Creek in Charles County to view 10-15 miles into Virginia to see Confederate troop movements.
Lincoln declared some 2,000 enslaved people in Washington, D.C., free, and that resulted in a “slave stampede” through Southern Maryland, he said. However because the fugitive slave law was still in effect, slaveowners could still go into the district to retrieve the people they had enslaved.
Shomette noted that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a program to allow enslaved people to serve in the army without Lincoln’s approval.
A base known as Camp Stanton was set up in Benedict to train U.S. Colored Troops. They were taught to read, write and fight over a six-week period. There were some 52,000 members of the Colored Troops in Maryland, he said. They fought in 32 engagements and sustained the highest casualty rate, 25%, of any regiment in the Union.
A hospital was set up at Point Lookout and was later converted into a prison camp.
“It becomes ‘Andersonville North,’” Shomette said, referring to the infamous Confederate prison camp in Georgia. “It becomes a death camp,” he said, citing “new data” that reveals more than 10,000 died at Point Lookout. At one time, 20,000 were housed there. There was a lot of fighting amongst prisoners, he said, noting food and clothing were scarce.
According to the National Park Service, approximately 4,000 of the total 50,000 Point Lookout prisoners died while incarcerated.
The Union later instituted a draft that enlisted refugees who escaped the Confederacy. A refugee office called “The Plains” was set up at Benedict.
Col. Alonzo G. Draper launched a raid into Virginia from Point Lookout, and some 10% of the enslaved people in the Northern Neck were freed, Shomette said.
St. Inigoes became a Union naval base, and by 1864 the Confederacy began to fall apart.
Lincoln announced an “amnesty draft” that resulted in some 2,000 Confederates being sworn in as Union soldiers, Shomette said.
After Booth shot Lincoln, crossed into Maryland and holed up in the Zekiah Swamp for a time, Union forces were moved from Charles County to Mechanicsville to engage some Confederates. A man named Buckler was assigned to lead the Union forces, but he later returned and said no engagement occurred. Buckler then disappeared from the federal record, Shomette said.
Stanton had essentially taken over control following Lincoln’s shooting because Vice President Andrew Johnson “walked away” and Secretary of State William Seward had been stabbed in the face by a former Confederate soldier and member of Mosby’s Rangers — Lewis Powell. Seward was saved by a splint he was wearing around his broken jaw, which was injured nine days earlier in a carriage accident, according to cbnews.com.
Boston Corbett, who had himself castrated because he believed God wanted it, shot and killed Booth in Virginia, Shomette said. Corbett put a gun in a plank in a barn where Booth was hiding and fired.
In response to a question following his presentation, Shomette said most of the Confederate arms came from England, although some came from various parts of the U.S. He noted there were pro-Confederate riots in New York, for example.
In response to another question, Shomette noted that the one person from Southern Maryland who voted for Lincoln for president in 1860 was tarred and feathered.
In another local tidbit, Shomette said two of his ancestors died at Point Lookout.
(Southern Maryland News)
